Ansel Adams 2005 Wall Calendar

Customer Reviews:

A Constant Place on our Wall.......2007-01-22

Each year the new edition of this calendar occupies the same place on our wall. Wonderful simple clear pictures.

Book Description

This book deals with shrinkage regression estimators obtained by shrinking the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator towards the origin, the author's main concern is to compare the sampling properties of a family of Stein-rule estimators with those of a family of minimum mean squared error estimators. In this book, the author deals with shrinkage regression estimators obtained by shrinking the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator towards the origin. In particular, he deals with a family of Stein-rule (SR) estimators and a family of minimum mean squared error (MMSE) estimators.

Book Description

This book is intended to provide economists with mathematical tools necessary to handle the concepts of evolution under uncertainty and adaption arising in economics, pursuing the Arrow-Debreu-Hahn legacy. It applies the techniques of viability theory to the study of economic systems evolving under contingent uncertainty, faced with scarcity constraints, and obeying various implementation of the inertia principle. The book illustrates how new tools can be used to move from static analysis, built on concepts of optima, equilibria and attractors to a contingent dynamic framework.

Book Description

Quasi una Fantasia contains Adorno's own selection from his essays and journalism over more than three decades. In its analytical profundity it can be compared to his Philosophy of Modern Music, but in the range of its topics and the clarity of its arguments it stands alone among Adorno's writings on music. At the book's core are illuminating studies of thc founders of modern music: Mahler, Schoenberg and Berg, and an important 'dialectical portrait' of Stravinsky. More unexpectedly, there are moving accounts of earlier works, including Bizet's Carmen, along with an entertainingly caustic 'Natural History of the Theatre'. Musical kitsch is the target of several shorter pieces. Yet even while Adorno demolishes 'commodity music' he is sustained by the conviction that music is supremely human because it retains the capacity to speak of inhumanity and to resist it. It is a conviction which reverberates throughout these remarkable writings.

Book Description

Until recently, profit in the television industry went to the owners of the conduit, the distributors of content. As the industry enters the digital age, the distribution bottleneck will disappear and be replaced by the content creators themselves. This book explains patterns of profitability from the golden age of television to the emerging digital age. Television today is not just 500 channels: it is countless millions of hours of programming stored on video servers around the world. For media companies wanting to create value in this new era, including the major networks, digital branding is key. Just as consumers manage to make their way in 30 seconds through a 100-foot aisle jammed with hundreds of boxes of cereal by reaching for a box of whatever name brand product they know and love, viewers will also navigate through the "vast wasteland" of content by returning to their favorite digital brand. This book provides detailed historical data, financial models, and informed discussion of profitability trends in the industry. It offers a framework for understanding and predicting profitability and describes the nature of branding as it applies to the television industry. It shows how a handful of dominant brands will emerge as sought-after organizers of content. Investors, industry consultants and executives, policy makers, students and academics will all find this book fascinating and informative.

Customer Reviews:

A must for understanding the future of television.......2001-01-17

Having spent much of my career in the television industry I found this book fascinating. I would be surprised if it did not, over time, become a secret playbook for those in the industry interested in getting a leg up on their competition -- or at least in understanding what the future holds. My only minor complaint is that some of the forays into high-level MBA-type analysis were hard to follow for someone without a background in economics. Yet those occasions were rare (two actually) and did not detract much from this otherwise thought provoking and well written book.

A concise and clearly-written analysis........1999-11-02

Mr. Todreas brilliantly slices through the mountain of speculative bunk written about convergent media. The author concisely argues that value in the Digital Television Era will shift from distributors to certain branded content creators and established packagers. Supported by easy to read tables and a relaxed writing style, Mr. Todreas scores solid hits up and down his analysis.

I recommend that all television and media professionals, as well as consultants, read VALUE CREATION to better understand their opportunities as we begin to break free of the distribution bottlenecks of the Cable Era.

Explosive! This guy knows what's going on!.......1999-10-27

I normally choose books written by well-known authors. Timothy M. Todreas is not one of them.

What made me buy this book was the title, and its content: Just as mp3 and the Internet have revolutionized music and information, digital television will revolutionize the whole TV experience as well as the industry.

This book held me captive from page one to the end, because it holds the answers to so many questions in my line of work, which is a consultancy services for digital television!

I recommend it to anyone who is interested in where television is coming from, where it's going and what the h_ll you should do about it!

Amazon.com Reviews

In the early 1970s, while Silicon Valley was designing the latest generation of digital wristwatches and pocket calculators, a ragtag group of college dropouts, hippies, and electronics hobbyists were busy creating the future in their garages. What they built was the personal computer, but what they were aiming for was something much more ambitious: a revolution. Fire in the Valley is the story of their efforts, and in particular, the contributions of an informal think tank called the Homebrew Computer Club. Its technically gifted community, comprising sci-fi aficionados and Berkeley counterculturists, believed computers could usher in an age of human empowerment, perhaps even a utopia.

The club's most famous member is Steve Jobs of Apple, whose story is told here, as is Bill Gates's, who was strongly influenced by Homebrew. What sets Fire in the Valley apart from the many other books about early days at Apple and Microsoft, though, is its focus on the brilliant engineers and coders who built the foundation that would eventually support those two companies. They included ex-Berkley Barb editor and hardware designer Lee Felsenstein, who was adamant about using computers for populist ends; Adam Osborne, who took PCs to the next level by making them portable; hacker legend John "Captain Crunch" Draper, who used telephony for his own mischievous purposes; and activist Ted Nelson, the Thom Paine of the computer revolution.

The cast of characters is sometimes tough to keep track of, and authors Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine have wisely included a graphic timeline in the first pages of the book that readers will find useful. It stretches from 1800 to 1999, encompassing events that have occurred since Fire in the Valley's original 1984 publication. This second edition includes new chapters and photographs to document the last 15 years, but they serve as more of an epilogue than a new act in this drama. The Homebrew Club's mark on personal computing history is cemented, and Fire in the Valley is an engaging account of it, one that should inspire readers everywhere. --Demian McLean

Book Description

A book not to be missed, just plain good reading about the drama of the Kids next door turning their dreams into millions.

--The New York Times Swaine and Freiberger capture the communal spirit of the early computer clubs, the brilliance and blundering of some of the first start-up companies, the assortment of naivete, noble purpose and greed that characterized various pioneers, and the inevitable transformation of all this into a major industry. Must reading.

--Philip Lemmons, editor-in-chief, BYTE Magazine

Customer Reviews:

Good, but factually flawed.......2006-11-29

First, this is a good book, and brings to light many of the early parts of
home and business use of microcomputers.

However, despite the "updated classic" state of the current printing, it
contains factual errors that should be corrected. I started the book
recently, and almost threw it out after seeing the historical errors in
the front of the book.

On page 9, the authors refer to ENIAC's "clanking teletype machines and
whirring tape drives". Fascinating, since the tape drive for computer
didn't arrive until 1951 (with the first Univac), and the ENIAC read and
wrote cards.

The book also drags out the tired story of Von Neumann creating the basic
architecture of the stored program computer. This is mainly a media
creation, since Von Neumann himself never claimed to have designed
the stored program computer, and in fact, all he did do was place his
name on a report from the EDVAC group drafted on a possible successor to
the ENIAC.

After the authors left early computer history, and went into the early
origins of the home microcomputer revolution, I felt better about the
book. However, I am skeptical of books where I see such obvious errors.
I have to wonder what other errors exist that I simply don't have
personal knowledge of.

Unfortunately, this may never be seen 35 reviews deep, but this book
is often quoted as being the "authority" on microcomputers.
Mrs Freiberger and Swain, please FIX THIS BOOK. It needs to be reviewed
for accuracy.

Scott Moore

Revisionist history at its best!.......2006-01-10

For the life of me, I cannot understand why this book and so many others completely fail to mention Commodore and it's contributions to the PC world. 1st millionth computer sold with VIC-20. Most computers ever sold with C64 (over 20 million!). First multitasking, etc. with Amiga. etc., etc... Commodore created the first, affordable home computer. They introduced computers to the masses. While Apple was trying to sell their Apple II series for astronomical prices, C64 was being sold for 1/3 - 1/5 the price.

I trully hope that in the end, the historical accounts of the birth of a personal computer will give credit where the credit is due - Chuck Peddle for creation of the 6502 processor, and Commodore for creation of the most sucesfull computer ever made - C64.

Shallow.......2005-04-30

If you wanted to know about the history of how Bill Gates got started, don't buy this book. I would recommand Hardrive. If you wanted to learn about Apple Computer, buy Apple Confidential 2.

Although this book does highlight the reason why the rise of the Personal Computer would happen. The major flaw of this book is it does not go in depth into the subject. The book is also too thick.

It's how we got where we are today..........2004-04-08

The TV movie based on this book was rather lame, but this is a great read on how the PC revolution got started.

Competent overview but no depth.......2004-04-04

This breezy read lightly covers the evolution of the personal computer mostly from the introduction of Altair until Steve Jobs' departure from Apple Computer. Covering as many people, machines and companies as possible the authors don't have time for a in-depth look at anything. The result seems like a 400 plus page newspaper or magazine article. The "Collector's Edition" has several additional chapters covering industry events up to 2000 and also contains a CD-ROM with more materials. I have not reviewed the CD-ROM.

Fire in the Valley The Making of the Personal Computer

Average customer rating:

Fire in the Valley The Making of the Personal Computer
Freiberger Paul & Swaine Michael
Manufacturer: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LDF9AC

Average customer rating:

Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer
Paul and Michael Swaine Freiberger
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Companies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OG7XL4

Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, 2nd Edition

Average customer rating:

Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, 2nd Edition
Paul; Swaine, Michael Freiberger
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KX2M2G

Book Description

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, few experts believed the fledgling Mujahideen resistance movement had a chance of withstanding the modern, mechanized onslaught of the Soviet Army. But somehow, the Mujahideen prevailed against a larger and decisively better equipped foe. No one predicted the Soviet Union would withdraw in defeat in 1989. With more than 100 first-hand reports from Mujahideen combat veterans and maps illustrating locations and disposition of forces, this book is a tactical look at a decentralized army of foot-mobile guerrillas as they wage war against a superior force. Learn about Mujahideen ambushes, raids, shelling attacks, fights against heliborne insertions, attacks on Soviet strong points, and urban combat in this rare look at the Soviet-Afghan conflict.

Customer Reviews:

Afghan Guerrilla Warfare: In the Words of the Mujahideen Fighters.......2005-07-08

This book is exactly what it says it is and it describes specific military encounters in great detail and in an interesting manner but it odes not provide the more general overall evaluation from a countrywide perspective that I was looking for.

A Great Tactical Primer on Mujahidin Operations.......2005-01-01

Afghan Guerrilla Warfare is the counterpart to the earlier volume The Bear Went Over the Mountain that described Soviet tactics in Afghanistan. Lester Grau and Ali Ahmad traveled to Pakistan in the 1990s to interview about 40 Mujahidin (Holy Warrior) fighters about their perspectives on the war. This is a detailed tactical study intended for professional soldiers - not academics and not the general public, although some from each group may find this study interesting. The authors have amassed over one hundred interviews into a series of tactical vignettes that are organized by topics, such as ambushes, raids, urban combat and defending base camps. Most of the vignettes include a sketch map, along with references to the 1:100,000 map sheets consulted. The result is an impressive volume that acts essentially as the FM 100-5 Operations for Afghan insurgents. Although there is not a direct relationship between the Soviet experience in Afghanistan and the current Coalition experience in Iraq, there are enough tactical similarities to merit proper study of the lessons in these pages.

Afghan Guerrilla Warfare goes a long way towards dispelling many of the myths and misconceptions that have arisen about the Mujahidin, starting with the notion that they were tactical wizards of some sort. The authors detail the gamut of Mujahidin operations, and their execution ranges from professionally planned with successful outcomes to amateurish operations that end in catastrophe. Readers will be amazed to see how some Mujahidin groups used the same ambush spots over and over again, without the Soviets anticipating it or making any countermoves. On the other hand, it is interesting to read about the number of occasions where the mujahidin were caught by surprise or even asleep. It is also clear that the high degree of Soviet tactical incompetence enhanced the success of Mujahidin efforts, but on the rare occasions when the Soviets did their homework, the Muj suffered accordingly. The authors also make the point that the Mujahidin did not expect to win the war in the short term and consequently, their methods were geared toward protracted attrition warfare rather than achieving great operational objectives.

Many of the strengths of the Afghan Mujahidin - invisibility and mobility - are also strengths for the current insurgents in Iraq. The Afghan guerrillas excelled at hit-and-run raids in both mountainous and urban terrain, inflicting losses on Soviet convoys and then melting away before the Soviets replied with artillery and helicopter gunships (unlike the US, the Soviets replied mostly by fire, rather than maneuver). The guerrillas were also very good - or the Soviets were very bad - about cordon and search operations; these efforts usually ended up with the guerrillas slipping the noose. On the other hand, the Soviets were gradually able to impact Mujahidin logistics (by destroying villages and moving population), which forced the guerrillas to build large base camps in mountainous terrain. These "mountain fortresses," such as Tora Bora, were tough nuts to crack but the authors believe that they were something of a liability for the insurgents, tying down many troops in defensive roles and attractive Soviet firepower at a fixed target.

There are some useful lessons in these pages for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan today. First, the guerrillas never developed an effective means of dealing with Soviet minefields around fortified bases - and it is likely that current guerrillas would be equally stymied by US antipersonnel mines and obstacles (although the US cannot politically afford to use mines indiscriminately as the Soviets did). Second, lack of a unified command structure made it difficult to crack the insurgency (i.e. leaders were replaceable) but it also made it nearly impossible for the insurgents to rise above the tactical level of warfare. Without a unified command, it is exceedingly difficult for guerrillas to fight warfare on the operational level - a necessary prerequisite for victory. Finally, the mujahidin in Afghanistan rarely used suicide tactics or targeted civilians - unlike the preference of Iraqi insurgents today. The Afghan insurgents enjoyed popular support in many areas because they were fighting a hated invader (who brought nothing but tyranny and devastation) and they focused their efforts on military targets. However, the current Iraqi insurgents display an insensitivity toward civilian casualties that undermines their ability to gather popular support, despite the presence of an invader. Ultimately, Grau's study sheds light on how one particular Muslim culture waged jihad against one particular foe, but the lessons are useful in a general sense for the types of conflict that the US is likely to see for years to come.

Useful in a practical sense.......2003-12-01

Before deploying to Afghanistan last year with a Special Forces battalion, I read this book (along with "Afghanstan's Endless War" - Goodson, "The Hidden War" - Borovik, and "The Soviet-Afghan War" - Grau & Gress, eds.) to prepare for battle. While a rough read that could stand better organization, it had very accurate, pertinent information that was useful for a warrior. I personnal went to about ten of the battle locations (some of them were hard to avoid) and was able to follow the battle on the ground by the descriptions in the book. Additionally, on the road to Gardez, was able to discuss some of the battles with locals, who concurred with details. Valuable to me.

Informative Guerrilla Tactics.......2003-01-05

I have a certain curiousity for Military Science and this was a great book that related to Guerrilla Warfare. There are a total of 15 Chapters, 14 of them with many different real life vignettes (around 92). As well many interviews with real life mujahideen fighters who were there. Anybody who posesses a distinct interest in Military Science or Guerrilla Warfare will certainly enjoy this book!

Not original. Free on the internet. Not very useful........2002-11-13

I had already downloaded "The Other Side of the Mountain" and read it. Nowhere on this site is it mentioned that this book is simply a reprinting of that "FREE" work. It was not even spell checked or edited. Do a search and download the original. If you THEN want a printed copy, order this one. The only thing new and improved is the very nice cover.

The book is basically about 94 very short and dry retellings of small battles between the two adversaries. Not much is useful or educational. Not even entertaining. I was looking for education and enterntainment.

There is another FREE companion piece called "The Bear Went Over The Mountain". Do a web search on each and download.

-Copernic.com is the best web searcher I've found.

Amazon.com

Beyond being a copious collection of specialized maps (which help to explain everything from the collapse of empires to campaigns of the century's major wars to the current trouble spots of the world), this also serves as a valuable one-volume encyclopedia of our tumultuous century. The book is attractively designed, with many large double-spreads featuring articles, photographs and many, many maps. The Hammond Atlas of the 20th Century goes far in explaining our recent history and is a great addition to any library.

Book Description

This fascinating atlas features over 200 full-colour illustrations and photographs and over 120 thematic maps, which provide a visual exploration of the major events and themes of the 20th century. Learn all about modern history with its informative text, detailed maps, and colourful charts. It also contains an extensive 12-page chronology and 14-page index. Current to the year 2000.

Customer Reviews:

Hammond: Atlas of the 20th Century.......2000-07-15

An excellent learning tool for most educational levels. I recommend this book for the high school student with an inquiring mind, the university student with an introductory or intermediate level of knowledge and the armchair historian familiar with the subject. Of course, the best feature of this book is the extensive collection of full-color maps, but the commentary is well-written and knowing. I would have liked a more descriptive analysis of certain events but this is already a lengthy work.

Book Description

This popular geology explores the southern Colorado Plateau Province, the country roughly encompassed by the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. Navajo country is a land of rock, little water, sparse vegetation, and breathtaking beauty. Some of America's most remarkable geographic formations embellish this harsh desert land: the Grand Canyon, Marble Canyon, Monument Valley, Valley of the Gods, the Totem Pole, Canyon de Chelly, Shiprock, Spider Rock, Church Rock, and many others.

The Navajo Indians settled this region five hundred years ago, defining the boundaries of their homeland by the Four Sacred Mountains to the north, south, east, and west. Over the centuries, this rugged, beautiful country helped shape Navajo mythology, legend, and identity. Likewise, the American people have incorporated the spectacular geography of Navajo country into their own national mythology.

Liberally illustrated, Navajo Country sketches the long geological history and explores the many physical landscapes of this rocky, colorful region. Both the novice and professional will find this book a handy introduction to the geology of the southern Colorado Plateau Province.

Average customer rating:
NAVAJO COUNTRY. A GEOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FOUR CORNERS REGION.
D.L. Baars
Manufacturer: University of New Mexico Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000WQ825W

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